HANNAH WHITAKER – LIVE AGENT
2017-02-13Each photograph was shot on a single sheet of 4×5 film, through layered exposures and in-camera masking. Whitaker’s process begins with a sketch, which she uses to hand-cut a set of paper screens to be inserted into the camera during exposure. The sketches used in Live Agent incorporate wavy scribbling, marking a new turn towards the gestural. These forms are then painstakingly and repeatedly redrawn to make the screens, draining them of any purported spontaneity and burying them under a laborious process. Requiring thorough planning, the completed photographic image may involve up to 30 screens (or 30 exposures) and several weeks of shooting. The resulting image is determined less by any one subject than by its own complex construction.
With a longstanding interest in forms of automation, Whitaker’s process draws from the punch cards used at various points in the history of computing. Similarly employing holes in paper, her screen sets can be thought of like computer programs-they can be run repeatedly, inputting different information to get a different output. As a result, the show features multiple photographs shot with the same screens, compelling different content to adhere to the same visual schematic.
Opposite – Point and Flex (triptych), 2017
Exhibition runs through to March 11th, 2017
M+B
612 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles
California 90069
